Tech reading list number three. September 2017
To get things done many organisations rely on others. That is why collaboration tools need to allow employees to share information. Having the ability to bring outside organisations into a space to collaborate is an increasing requirement. You can have a company embedded in your organisation managing a project who use Slack. So my interest piqued with the arrival of Slacks new feature as explained by The Verge “Slack introduces shared channels to let companies collaborate” (12/09/17). So when a project kicks off a shared Slack channel can now be opened to run the project. You can share the Slack channel but will the organisation you are working with Slack with you or be content with email collaboration or ask you into their collaboration space. This new feature form Slack at the very least gives you the option to bring them into the same Slack channel for collaboration.
If anybody knows about the effect technology has on workers it is trade unions. They have been dealing with the effects of technology on workers since the industrial revolution. Sometimes it can feel like we hear more about the downside of artificial intelligence and robots but this article in the Guardian gives hope “Robots and AI can bring down pension age, says TUC”. I am hopeful developments in both AI and robots can create wealth. For some the wealth created can go towards creating a Universal Basic Income but another benefit could be to allow people to retire earlier.
You can tell if someone is a hardcore cineaste by their enthusiasm for silent films. Can the same be said of social media content creators. Well yes, silence is indeed golden as this New York Times article testifies “The Silent Film Returns – on Social Media” (13/09/17)
Tubular Labs, the online video analytics company that placed LADbible at the top of its rankings, has found that of videos posted to Facebook by media companies, 46 percent of views go to videos that are completely silent or just accompanied by music. And in practice, an even higher proportion of social videos are watched silently. The advertising agency BBDO Worldwide says that more than 85 percent of its clients’ Facebook videos are viewed with the sound off.
Since being in Los Angeles I have made two visits to the IMAX VR centre to have what’s termed a virtual reality experience. These were the most immersive VR experiences I have had to date. These experiences will get way better, more varied and common place in the years to come. This is why reading this World Economic Forum (WEF) article is important “Augmented and virtual reality: the promise and peril of immersive technologies (11/09/17). While you are enjoying or learning from an immersive VR experience what is happening to the data being generated? Will they be examining your reactions to content? Will adverts be shown when you next have a gaming VR experience?
Advertising is already increasingly personalized as our personal data allows better and better targeting. In the context of immersive technologies, the term “gaze-through rate” has been coined to describe the effectiveness of an augmented or virtual advertisement in capturing user attention. Companies such as Retinad offer analytics to track behaviour on VR/AR devices with an aim to increase the conversion rate from advertisements as well as user engagement with content. Thus far, they have been shown to be up to 30 times more effective in engaging users than mobile advertisements.
As Apple and Facebook build state of the art futuristic headquarters for the talent they hire we can reflect on the innovation tech company that was Bell Labs. In the 20th century they were huge in innovation. The transistor, communications satellites and the solar battery cell were created inside Bell Labs. This piece originally appeared in Quora explains “Why Bell Labs Was So Important To Innovation In The 20th Century” (19/07/17). Even the hiring practice was interesting
Rather than letting its org chart dictate its hiring practices – as in, “We’d love to hire you, but you don’t have the particular skills we need right now” – Bell Labs prioritized hiring talent, period, even when it wasn’t immediately clear where in the organization that talent would fit.
Just recently I was in Las Vegas. Oddly perhaps, I don’t gamble but I am fascinated by watching people gamble. Especially people on slot machines. Look closely, you can see almost zombie like movements as they play the machines. Repeating the same movement over and over with little change to their facial expressions. What do video games and slot machine addicts share in common? More if this article from The Conversation is to believed “ The business of addiction: how the video gaming industry is evolving to be like the casino industry” . This is particularly evident in free to play games, the more you play the more susceptible you are to buy in – game – content. This technique is shared by casinos and some games companies
Modern video game companies also use shops and in-game ATMs to entice players to keep spending without having time to cool off outside of the game. Casinos use the same technique by placing ATMs and shops in-house. Gambling researcher Mark Griffiths suggests that this technique is used “to entice those who are gambling not to stop or go home”.
Lastly a film, one of my favourites called ‘Videodrome’ (David Cronenberg. 1983). The film is about a rogue TV station called Videodrome that is a front for a political organisation that seeks to ‘bring about a world in which television replaces every aspect of everyday life’. If the film was rebooted for audiences in 2017 then Virtual Reality not TV would be the vehicle to bring about this change.
Have a great tech week and don’t get to close to a TV screen.
